Evanescent Everything
The night before my 10th birthday I cried. My sister thought I was absolutely mental. I cried because I was struck with the realization that I would never again be a single digit age. Ridiculous right? But 9 year old me was overcome with this crushing sense of time. It was my last night as a single digit human being and that was upsetting to me because it was something that I could ever get back.
This post may be a bit fruity for some people but I refuse to apologize, because that is part of my new mentality that I will explain as we go on.
Recently I have come across 3 things that have resonated deeply with me.
The first is a book called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.
The second is an article by Mark Manson called “7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose” https://markmanson.net/life-purpose
The third was a Ted Talk called the “The Magic of Not Giving a Fuck” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwRzjFQa_Og
Now I know you’re already taking time out of your day to read this blog so you don’t HAVE to watch/read these things but I highly recommend the next time you have 12 minutes and 36 seconds to watch the video, or at the very least read Mark Manson’s post, it’s fairly short (and he’s just a great writer, I 100% live by his article called “Fuck Yes or No”)
The book Big Magic is basically a book about living creatively and it has spoken to me on a deep level. A lot of this post is actually just a reflection on things that I have read in this book. The title of this post is Evanescent Everything because of one particular passage. The author speaks of this woman who goes out and gets tattoos all the time. Most she did on a whim, letting the artist surprise her or choosing when she arrived. When interrogated as to why and how she does this so casually, the woman’s response is that they are temporary. Not meaning the tattoos are temporary ink, but that her body is temporary. In reality, everything is temporary. We as humans will not last forever. And I found this beautiful. It was an almost liberating realization.
Nothing we do truly matters that. I don’t mean that in a depressing Eeyore type way, I took it to be completely freeing. Pain is temporary, heartbreak is temporary, and in the same way, happiness is temporary. Therefore we have to take those moments and truly appreciate them. 10 year old me had a version of this idea but was interpreting it negatively. I saw time as a fleeting thing that I was losing control of. 20 year old me thinks it’s beautiful. The idea that disappointment and every negative feeling that passes through me is just there temporarily, is comforting, and the idea that the wonderful feelings are just passing through as well, makes me relish in the fact that they stopped by to say hello at all.
Brilliant. What he means by this is that everything has its ups and its downs and you have to choose your path that is worth the downs. I personally identify this strongly because my life revolves around sport of kings, which is said to have the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows and I can vouch for the truth in that statement. My sisters never understood why I got up at 4 am to clean stalls before school. Well, that shit (pun intended) was 100% worth it because of my dreams and what I wanted to do. I love riding race horses. Period. No if ands or buts about it. I do not win every race, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I LOVE riding. There are good days and bad days, a shit sandwich if you will. More like an infinite Shit Big Mac actually, because it never ends. But god do I love that shit sandwich; I found my favorite flavor. And I like to think I live with shit hors d'oeuvres as well. I love going to the gym. I don’t love being so sore I can’t walk up stairs, but the way I feel after a workout, feeling strong, and even just loving how I look due to my hard work are all things that are worth a little discomfort. My shit hors d’oeuvre. It’s all about balance, good and bad, and like I said, everything is evanescent.
Next I’d like to talk about my fuck budget. Sarah Knight, I thank you for introducing me to this concept. If you didn’t watch the video, basically she talks about allocating fucks. Your fucks are defined as your time, energy, and money, and how you spend your ‘fuck bucks’ is entirely up to you. People burn out because we give too many fucks, and we really only have a limited number of fucks before we wear ourselves down to a very unhappy place. So she recommends setting a fuck budget, and I have made it my personal mission to start respecting my own fuck budget, because in the past I have not, I have handed out fucks until I have no energy for my own happiness. Her plan is simple, step one is decide what you don’t give a fuck about, and step 2 is don’t give your time, energy, and money to that, i.e., don’t give a fuck about those things. Now I don’t want to sit here and summarize a brilliant video so just go watch it already, but basically, going on my theme of everything being temporary, I’ve decided that it is important to make better use of my time, an
d to do so by limiting my fucks given so I can devote my fucks to things I truly do give a fuck about.
I’ve always said that my base priority is sleep. That is my baseline for joy. So the things that I truly give a fuck about, my TOP priorities are things that I am willing to give up sleep for. Obviously horses are at the top of this list, but I am also known to lose sleep for a workout, a good book, currently I’m adding writing to the list, and the occasional person (you know you are DAMN special if I chose you over sleep). So basically, I allocate my fucks based on a simple question of “would I rather do this than nap?” And so far since implementing this strategy, life has become a great deal more enjoyable.
Now this goes hand in hand with a concept I developed years ago. I call it my Fuck It Bucket. Not only is a a brilliant concept if I do say so myself, but it also rhymes which makes me happy. Basically when something happens that is potentially upsetting, I take a deep breath and tell myself to put it in the Fuck It Bucket and move on. For example, I was in the grocery store the other day and I was perusing and an old man came up behind me and apparently I was in his way, but he was behind me so I couldn’t see him and he didn’t say a word. When I finally noticed I said “Oh I’m sorry I didn’t see you there am I in your way?” To which he rudely pushed past me and said “You know Hilary lost the election right?” Now I’m not entirely sure what this meant but I had a sneaking suspicion that this grumpy old man has just made a derogatory comment towards me being a woman and therefore being in his way. Somehow his grumpy old man brain had decided the best way to express his misogynistic irritation was through reminding me of who the president was? Either way, I was irritated because I had been perfectly pleasant, and he had been an asshole. But did this interaction REALLY impact my day? No. So in the Fuck It Bucket it goes. If you prefer a less crass way of thinking of it, it’s basically my mental version of the escape pod that R2D2 gets away in, in episode IV. I let my irritations and things that aren’t worth fretting over drift out of my mind and they can land on Tatooine or wherever the hell space takes them.
(Alright mom, I know you’ve had a heart attack with my language so far so I'll end this paragraph here before we have to resuscitate you.)Next I’d like to talk about my fuck budget. Sarah Knight, I thank you for introducing me to this concept. If you didn’t watch the video, basically she talks about allocating fucks. Your fucks are defined as your time, energy, and money, and how you spend your ‘fuck bucks’ is entirely up to you. People burn out because we give too many fucks, and we really only have a limited number of fucks before we wear ourselves down to a very unhappy place. So she recommends setting a fuck budget, and I have made it my personal mission to start respecting my own fuck budget, because in the past I have not, I have handed out fucks until I have no energy for my own happiness. Her plan is simple, step one is decide what you don’t give a fuck about, and step 2 is don’t give your time, energy, and money to that, i.e., don’t give a fuck about those things. Now I don’t want to sit here and summarize a brilliant video so just go watch it already, but basically, going on my theme of everything being temporary, I’ve decided that it is important to make better use of my time, an
d to do so by limiting my fucks given so I can devote my fucks to things I truly do give a fuck about.
I’ve always said that my base priority is sleep. That is my baseline for joy. So the things that I truly give a fuck about, my TOP priorities are things that I am willing to give up sleep for. Obviously horses are at the top of this list, but I am also known to lose sleep for a workout, a good book, currently I’m adding writing to the list, and the occasional person (you know you are DAMN special if I chose you over sleep). So basically, I allocate my fucks based on a simple question of “would I rather do this than nap?” And so far since implementing this strategy, life has become a great deal more enjoyable.
Now this goes hand in hand with a concept I developed years ago. I call it my Fuck It Bucket. Not only is a a brilliant concept if I do say so myself, but it also rhymes which makes me happy. Basically when something happens that is potentially upsetting, I take a deep breath and tell myself to put it in the Fuck It Bucket and move on. For example, I was in the grocery store the other day and I was perusing and an old man came up behind me and apparently I was in his way, but he was behind me so I couldn’t see him and he didn’t say a word. When I finally noticed I said “Oh I’m sorry I didn’t see you there am I in your way?” To which he rudely pushed past me and said “You know Hilary lost the election right?” Now I’m not entirely sure what this meant but I had a sneaking suspicion that this grumpy old man has just made a derogatory comment towards me being a woman and therefore being in his way. Somehow his grumpy old man brain had decided the best way to express his misogynistic irritation was through reminding me of who the president was? Either way, I was irritated because I had been perfectly pleasant, and he had been an asshole. But did this interaction REALLY impact my day? No. So in the Fuck It Bucket it goes. If you prefer a less crass way of thinking of it, it’s basically my mental version of the escape pod that R2D2 gets away in, in episode IV. I let my irritations and things that aren’t worth fretting over drift out of my mind and they can land on Tatooine or wherever the hell space takes them.
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| I made brownies |
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